Paul and Silas in Prison: A Meditation for Boy Scouts.
Background: Paul and Silas were traveling as missionaries, and came to the city of Philippi in Macedonia. Macedonia is in the northern part of the country of Greece, and Philippi was, at that time, the largest city in Macedonia.
Read the text: Acts 16:16-40 (New Testament).
It is never good to be in prison. Prisons are places for punishment, and even so-called “nice” prisons are bad places to be, but in Paul’s time prisons were especially bad. Think about what you just heard. Paul and Silas were chained to the floor, so they couldn’t stand up and couldn’t move around. All they could do was sit. There were no lights. For one thing, there was no electricity in those days. All anyone had for light at night was a torch, and we are told that when the jailer came in to see what was happening, he had to get a torch. Paul and Silas were in the dark. The story indicates that Paul and Silas had not had anything to eat for quite a while, so they were probably hungry and thirsty, and didn’t know when they might get anything to eat or drink. There were other prisoners locked into this place. Probably some of them could move around more than Paul and Silas could, but they were locked in. There was probably no toilet, and the place probably stunk.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, Paul and Silas had been beaten, beaten hard, and they probably had open wounds. They hurt.
What I want you to think about today is how Paul and Silas were like good Scouts. The eighth point on the Scout Law says, “A Scout is cheerful.” The eleventh edition of the Boy Scout Handbook says, “Now and then you must do things that you don’t like very much. A cheerful attitude can make the time go by more quickly . . . you can complain if you want to and be grumpy all the time, but it is easier and much more enjoyable to decide from the start to be cheerful whenever you can.” (p. 51.)
Not many people would think that the prison in ancient Philippi would be a place where anyone could be cheerful, but Paul and Silas showed otherwise. In spite of their pain, and the darkness, and the stink, and their hunger and thirst, they sang! They sang praise to God! They gave us an example of extreme cheerfulness.
How else did Paul and Silas show us how to live the Scout Law? Think about it for a minute.
The fourth point on the Scout Law says, “A Scout is friendly.” What happens when you are friendly? Other people like friendly folks, and they’ll often follow the leadership of a friendly person. The other prisoners certainly followed the leadership of Paul and Silas. When the angel broke open the prison, everyone could have run away, and the only reason they didn’t escape was because of Paul and Silas. The story doesn’t tell us that, but we can be sure that’s how it happened. So the prisoners must have had great respect for Paul and Silas, the kind of respect that comes to friendly people.
“A Scout is helpful.” That’s the third point on the Scout law. The Boy Scout Handbook says, “A Scout cares about other people. . . . Scouts want the best for everyone and act to make that happen.” (p. 48.) After the angel broke open the jail, the jailer started to kill himself because if all the prisoners had escaped he would be held responsible and would probably suffer a worse death than if he simply committed suicide. But Paul and Silas cared about the jailer, even though we wouldn’t expect them to. They stopped the jailer from committing suicide. Keeping other people from dying is the height of helpfulness.
If we think about it, we can see that most of the points in the Scout law show up in this Bible story about Paul and Silas.
They were trustworthy. God placed a great deal of trust in them, and they fulfilled that trust. They were certainly loyal, especially loyal to God, but also to the people they were with. They were clean. The story says that after the jailer brought them out of the prison, they didn’t eat until they had washed.
You might have a hard time seeing “A Scout is thrifty” in this story, but think about the thing that got them into jail in the first place. The woman who was following them was really crazy, but some people who owned her as a slave were claiming that she could tell fortunes, and were making money by charging fees for her fortune-telling. When Paul cured the woman, he saved money for a lot of people who would have been conned by her so-called fortune-telling.
The Scout Law is a good guide for living. Every Scout has to learn the Scout Law, but learning it is not enough. We should live the Scout Law, even when times are tough.
--meditation by Richard E. Davies (copyright ©2007).